After Extending Its D.C. Lease, Washington Post Calls Workers Back Full Time
Its K Street headquarters deal extends to at least 2037
By Nick Trombola November 8, 2024 12:45 pm
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Even national news outlets aren’t immune to the call to return to office, with the Washington Post as the latest high-profile organization to mandate that employees come back to its 300,000-square-foot Downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters and other offices.
A new memo from the paper’s publisher, William Lewis, called for employees to return to in-person work five days per week by June 2, according to reporting by The New York Times. Managers are meanwhile expected to return by Feb. 3.
“You know how much we all must do to improve our company, and I do not believe we can do that successfully via Zoom,” Lewis said in the memo. “We are really good when we are working together in person.”
The Post is owned by Nash Holdings, a private investment firm controlled by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. The office mandate at the Post echoes a similar five-days-per-week return-to-office policy for Amazon employees, which the e-commerce giant announced in September.
The Post, among countless other companies, instituted a work-from-home policy in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic made landfall in the U.S. A couple of years later, in early 2022, workers were told by the company to return to the office at least three days per week.
Remote workers within commuting distance from the Post’s D.C. or New York City offices will also be expected to return to the office, while all other remote working situations will require departmental approval, Lewis said.
The union representing much of the paper’s workforce, The Washington Post Guild, quickly issued a response decrying the new policy as “inflexible and outdated,” and said the change “stands to further disrupt our work than to improve our productivity or collaboration.”
The union said Guild employees would not have to make any return-to-office changes until June 2 at the earliest, and that it was formulating a response to the new policy.
The Post earlier this year renegotiated its lease at One Franklin Square at 1301 K Street NW, owned by Hines and considered the tallest commercial tower in the District. Its lease at the building, which it has occupied since 2016, now runs until 2037, with an option to extend for five years.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
